sjb007 wrote:

but it'll be a bloody mess

I hope you are not referring to my image - the local planning officer said they are the basis for an entirely adequate application.

I wasn't insulting the end result, more pointing out that it will be painful. A simple example... In Excel you have all your drawn elements on the top of the spreadsheet as just one big collection of drawn objects. Let's take Inkscape as an example: it lets you use layers for separating the objects of your drawing logical groupings, or maybe variations while working out options. Similar to how the levels in SH3D can be used to do the same thing. This is more about working with your plan, not the final output. Your screenshot looks good, but I suspect that is more down to your perseverance then Excels abilities as a technical drawing tool.

sjb007 wrote:

As you are retired and abusing a very old version of Excel, is it fair to say that you are reluctant to learn new software? At the end of the day, use what works for you, but...

I've spent that last few days taking a relatively deep dive into Sweet Home 3D.

Cool! It is awesome for helping firm up how you will arrange the layout and spaces in a building. It's good for representative images, and the plans are good too. Getting elevations is a bit more challenging, especially if you want them dimensioned. Getting them all onto a standard A2 at proper 1:50 scale with a proper info block is a lot more work and requires other software.

sjb007 wrote:

I do have to put my IT lecturing hat on for a moment though, and wag my finger at using such old, outdated applications

That was enjoyable - Sweet Home 3D is currently purring along on this Intel(R) Core(TM)i5-3320M CPU @2.60GHZ 4GB RAM and Win7 pro is, pretty much, solid as a rock.

sjb007 wrote:

General support for Office 2007 ended in 2012. That is a more than a decade of potential exposure with zero security updates.

[:))] If you imagine M_S is not harvesting all that ou_tloo_kdo_tcom info for, godonlyknows what, well... in any case, I haven't, er, wasted, a penny on a new machine for 11 years. Some heavy duty photogrammetry calculations could cause me to update somewhat if I ever choose to look into that fascinating topic more thoroughly but, equally, if that was the case I might just look into M_S Azure (or similar) in a bit more detail and rent out a host of remote CPU's for as short a time as possible

This is not about the relative power of your PC, or Microsoft having God mode on your PC. This is about old unsupported software having unpatched vulnerabilities that malicious 3rd parties can exploit. They want three things from you:

1. your money,
2. your personal info (that they can sell for money)
3. your internet (that they can use to attack other systems for even more money)

sjb007 wrote:

If you insist on using a spreadsheet tool to create plans

As it is, i'd prefer to get everything done in Sweet Home 3D but suspect that will not happen. I'd also like not to have to put the effort into learning FREECAD (which I imagine could do it all) but, if possible, do not wish to expend the energy to do that.

On an application difficulty rating of 1-10 with SH3D being a 3 or 4, FreeCAD I'd put at a 10. Learning to use it to create final plans would be a huge time sink. But then, you are retired [;)]

sjb007 wrote:

You are playing Russian Roulette

We all are - TCP/IP encapsulation (and/or whatever follows) makes that so. I'm amazed everytime I login to online banking and there's still a positive balance.

[:O] You must have one of these [O:)]

In summary - that "Excel is the wrong tool for every job" is patently untrue. I've used it to great effect over several decades even though the last version of VB / VBA was released in March 2017.

All of what you said was very enjoyable though - so thanks for the comment(s) [B-)]

Granted, it is a bit of hyperbole, but I've seen people use Excel for managing a large project instead of MS Project when they already had access to the real thing! As dates moved they would sit in meetings painstakingly colouring in the cells of their gantt chart styled spreadsheet as everyone else waited... And don't get me started on "critical" business processes being coded up in Excel and saved on that one "computer genius" persons local hard drive... [#-o]